There is a version of the probate story that gets told a lot at the moment. It goes something like this: the system has had its problems, Covid made things worse, but digitalisation will fix it. Average processing times are down to five weeks. Fundamentally everything is moving in the right direction.
At Provira, we sit in an unusual position in this sector. We are not solicitors managing the legal process, and we are not the families going through it. We are the people who families and executors call when the system has stalled and the financial pressure has become acute. That vantage point gives us a particular view of where the probate process is actually breaking down.
The cases waiting more than 12 months for probate have almost tripled in five years. The government’s own guidance says applications should take up to 16 weeks. For thousands of families, that figure is a fiction. And the cost of that gap is not abstract. HMRC charges 7.75 per cent interest on late inheritance tax payments. This means that a £100,000 bill can accrue hundreds of pounds every month the system stalls, costs that fall directly on the estate, reducing what beneficiaries receive through no fault of their own.
The central problem, from where we sit, is one that digitalisation cannot solve on its own. There is a fundamental disconnect between HMRC and the courts. Inheritance tax must be paid before probate is granted, but you cannot access the estate’s assets to pay it without probate. That circular conundrum has existed for years. It is the reason probate lending exists at all. Moving the application process online doesn’t offer an immediate solution.
What concerns me is that this is about to get harder before it gets easier. With pensions set to become part of the taxable estate from April 2027, executors will soon face an even heavier administrative burden. Beneficiaries will be required to track valuations across multiple pension schemes, manage additional tax reporting, all while the clock runs on inheritance tax and managing grief.
The narrative around probate reform tends to treat digitalisation as the end goal for a smoother probate process. I would argue it is only part of the answer. What we still need to see is proper coordination between HMRC and the courts to create a legal framework that reflects the complexity of modern estates. Until we have this, the gap between what the system promises and what families experience will keep generating the calls we receive.
